Free Winterland by Alan Glynn Page A

all right?’
    ‘Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.’
    ‘OK.’
    She puts the phone down, aware that Maloney is probably flattering himself about how riveted she is to what he’s been saying. But what she’s actually thinking is Get me out of here . Because if she’s not going to talk to P.J. – Her phone rings again.
    As before, she whips it off the table, but this time she stands up, having seen from the display that it’s Yvonne.
    She turns away from the table, doesn’t indicate anything to Maloney and heads for the door.
    ‘ Yvonne? ’
    It’s noisy out on Dawson Street, with traffic, tourists, a plane passing overhead.
    ‘ Gina? ’
    ‘Yes.’ She stares at the pavement. ‘I’m here.’
     
    ‘OK, Gina, listen to me.’
    ‘ Yvonne, what’s wrong? ’
    Gina presses the phone to her ear. Oh God, here it comes.
    ‘It’s Noel.’ Yvonne pauses. ‘ Our Noel.’ Gina closes her eyes. ‘He was killed last night. His car ran off the road.’
    ‘ Oh God .’
    ‘Somewhere in Wicklow.’
    ‘ Wicklow? ’
    Yvonne is sobbing now, and Gina can’t make out what she’s saying, or even if she’s saying anything at all.
    A dozen questions occur to Gina, and as quickly it occurs to her that none of them matters.
    ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispers, ‘poor Jenny.’
    ‘I know, I know.’
    ‘Where –’
    ‘They brought the body to Tallaght Hospital. Jenny’s on her way out there now.’ Yvonne then says something incoherent about ‘the two Noels’ and starts sobbing again.
    Gina nods along. She doesn’t know what Yvonne has said exactly, but the impact of putting these three words together is as much as she can deal with.
    She swallows. A raw, uncomfortable lump has formed in her throat.
    After a long and painful silence, the sisters somehow manage to get practical for a few seconds and make an arrangement. Yvonne says that because Catherine has just come back from identifying young Noel’s body and is naturally inconsolable she and Michelle will stay with her for the time being. Gina says that she’ll go out to Tallaght. They can talk later on the phone, or text.
     
    As her arm drops to her side, Gina realises that she won’t be having that chat with Noel over the next couple of days, the one he seemed so anxious to have. She realises that she won’t be seeing Noel again, ever.
    She looks around. The sun is shining now. Dawson Street looks beautiful, as it always does in the sunshine, and she wonders what is to stop him from just showing up here ? What is to stop him from appearing, this minute, on the pavement in front of her, striding down from St Stephen’s Green, say, or up from Trinity College?
    She shakes her head, slowly, as the lump in her throat approaches critical mass.
    Where is he?
    Gina walks back into the café. She retrieves her notebook from the table and her bag from the floor.
    ‘Have to go,’ she says, not looking at Maloney.
    Outside again, she turns right and heads in the direction of the taxi rank halfway up the street, her eyes filling with tears.

6
    ‘Joining me now from our Dáil studio is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Larry Bolger. Good afternoon, Minister.’
    ‘Sean.’
    Waiting for his first question, Bolger stares at a point on the wall directly opposite him.
    ‘Minister, a four-hundred-million-euro investment package, over three hundred and fifty new jobs. In these straitened times it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?’
     
    ‘No, indeed, Sean, it certainly doesn’t,’ Bolger says, taking off like a greyhound, ‘and days like today make my job worth doing, I can tell you. Paloma Electronics is a global player, and the fact that they’ve chosen to invest here, in the current economic climate, is a vote of confidence in our skilled workforce. But you must bear in mind, too – and it’s always the case in these matters, be it HP, Intel, Eiben-Chemcorp, Pfizer, Amcan, whoever – that we did face stiff competition for this, both from